Bankrupt Illinois Spent $12 Million on Medicaid for Dead People

Illinois is constantly at the bottom in every metric that measures our most successful states. It is perennially either the 48th, 49th, or 50th worst state in every category. And now we learn that the state is spending up to $12 million a year that it doesn’t have on Medicaid for people who are dead! Can this state become more of a joke?

The Associated Press recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request and uncovered a disturbing memo from the Illinois state auditor.

“State auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths,” the AP wrote.

This was more evidence that Obama’s claims that Democrats are fixing the Medicaid enrollment system is a failure.

“It’s disappointing and somewhat enraging for taxpayers, but it’s not surprising. I wish this administration would spend more time trying to solve the problems rather than trying to convince taxpayers that they’ve already solved them,” State Sen. Dale Righter (R, Mattoon) said.

Republicans in the state were pushing to resign with a private company to trim the rolls of dead and ineligible enrollees saying that a contract that recently ended achieved a Medicaid eligibility-removal rate of 40 percent.

The contract with Maximus Health Services, though, ended last year and Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn refused to resign with the company. Quinn shifted the work of maintaining the rolls to state workers.

As Kristina Ribali wrote, “Taxpayers in the Land of Lincoln should demand a major overhaul of their state’s Medicaid program. As Obamacare pushes more people into government health care programs, the 2,900 deceased people in Illinois who received these benefits could seem like a drop in the bucket of fraud, abuse and mismanagement.”

But none of this should surprise anyone. Illinois has been failing spectacularly since the last vestige of any power the state Republican Party once had faded nearly 10 years ago.

Illinois is a failed, one-party state in the death grip of the Democrat Party.

For a little more context, here are just a few more of the “low lights” of Illinois’ standing among the states:

So, we have to hand it to the Illinois Democrats and their weak sisters in the feckless Illinois Republican Party. You folks have done a great job utterly destroying one of the greatest states in the union. Great job to the dictator Michael Madigan, the hapless and ignorant Pat Quinn and the rest of the worthless set running the state into the ground.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs.
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